Posts Tagged ‘Celebration’

Last night, Davina, Deena and myself went to the Bristol O2 Academy to see Joe and Ginuwine. In short, we had a really good time! Here are some photos:

It was a really good night (despite the fact it was finished by 10pm)! Both guys’ vocals were on point, Ginuwine did a nice tribute to Michael Jackson that was celebratory without being cheesy (basically they played some MJ songs while he hyped the crowd without singing along or anything like that), and Joe pretended to leave and then came back and performed “No One Else Comes Close” on acoustic guitar, which was the highlight of his set (along with an extended version of “I Wanna Know” – bliss!). A couple of niggles: Ginuwine did not perform any of my favourite songs of his, except for “Pony”. I know that it’s important to perform newer material, especially for the younger kids in the audience who may not know his older stuff, but “When Doves Cry”, “What’s So Different” and particularly “So Anxious” are too damn good not to perform. And they were big hits back in the day! This is the second time I’ve seen him live… I’m thinking of sending him a message and letting him know. Does anyone know his twitter? He’s coming back to Bristol in December (which is really good! He must like it here 😀 ) with Tank and Tyrese to do some TGT stuff… I will probably go and see him again!

Joe looks a lot better in person than he does in his photos, and he did do my favourites: “I Wanna Know”, “No One Else Comes Close”, “Stutter” and “Where You At”. However, when he did “Where You At?” he said “This is old school!” Isn’t it only a couple of years old? Hardly what I would consider “old-school”, especially since he did “I Wanna Know” (which EVERYONE sang along with, and he extended it – it was epic!), “Stutter” and “All The Things (Your Man Won’t Do)” – one song that is even before my time and which I am going to download this very evening. Honour the older songs in your catalogue – especially when some of them are more soulful and bump harder than the new shit that passes for “R&B” these days. But I was really pleased with his performance – his voice was really good and I’m glad he did such a good job of his songs old and new.

A final question – what’s with wanting a sweaty towel? Ginuwine trailed his towel over him and then threw it into the crowd, which cause the predictable mini-scuffle (at least he didn’t lose his ring like last time at Panache, when the security had to jump into the crowd and bounce everyone out of the way looking for it)… I don’t understand. Is the person who gets the towel honestly not going to wash it, just because it has Ginuwine’s sweat on it? That’s kinda gross. I don’t get it… not even if it were Mariah Carey’s towel would I be that manic. Le shrug.

But I had a good time, and wanted to share it with y’all – especially as I haven’t updated for a little bit and I don’t want you to think I’m neglecting y’all! I appreciate you reading and I don’t forget it. Thankyou 🙂

Shakira’s new album She Wolf is her first album in four years (since 2005’s Oral Fixation volumes 1 & 2, which represented her best work to date, especially on the Spanish-language vol. 1) and represents a similar transformation to Jewel’s 0304 – Shakira has made an almost-purely danceable, modern album. Unlike Jewel’s efforts prior to 0304, Shakira has made addictive up-tempo music before: see “Whenever, Wherever”, “Objection (Tango)”, “La Tortura”, “Hips Don’t Lie”. But never before has she devoted an entire album to the stuff; gone are the tender, thoughtful ballads such as “Underneath Your Clothes” or “Illegal”. The question nevertheless remains – is Shakira, whose image is now more sexually potent than ever (straight blonde hair, dancing in a half-catsuit in her “She Wolf” video), cashing in, or does she still remain herself?

Mainly, I argue for the latter. Once the initial shock of the dense production and pounding bass subsides, the melding of cultures and instruments that has always been evident in Shakira’s work is here too. Listen to “Long Time”, and its reggae beat which gives way to an instrumental bridge that prominently features what sounds like a gypsy saxophone; “Mon Amour” employs a rocky half-time clap that is reminscent of Shakira’s spunkier moments such as Fijación Oral vol. 1‘s “Escondite Inglés”; the only semi-slow moment on the album is to be found in “Gypsy”, where Shakira employs an island feel with a plucked guitar, Caribbean-esque drums and Eastern-European string accents on the chorus. Not to forget “Why Wait”, which is 2009’s update of “Ojos Así / Eyes Like Yours” with its Middle-East-meets-West instrumentation and production over a storming 4/4 bassline (which becomes positively incendiary in the bridge). Musically, although it’s a little bit of a readjustment to our expectations of what Shakira’s music sounds like, it is still definitely her, and her claims of wanting to make a “bassy, beat-driven record that maintains experimentation with sounds from other parts of the world” ring true.

Shakira’s lyrics have always been put under a microscope – a fact that has irritated me immensely through the years. Not only is Shakira an incredibly intelligent woman, but her lyrics are far and away of a much higher quality than those of the majority of traditional pop made by native-English-speaking artists. The criticism she has gained from reviewers and comedy sketches alike (see MADTV’s parodies of “Whenever, Wherever” and “Objection (Tango)” on youtube – they’re funny, but they’re also unwarranted) is totally unfair and disrespectful of an artist who has mastered a complex language (once you get past the basics, English is a complicated language to speak fluently – I should know, since I have taught it) when I wager that the majority of these critics can’t speak more than a few basic sentences of phrase-book Spanish. Because Shakira dared to say “Lucky that my breasts are small and humble” in her first English hit does not make her nonsensical. Listen to “Octavo Día” and “Timor”, songs in both Spanish and English that express criticism with the way that the world is run and our own media-obsessed culture, and you’ll understand that Shakira is very well-aware of what she sings and what she has written. On She Wolf, there is nothing as incisive as “Timor” or “How Do You Do” (both from Oral Fixation vol. 2) but its opening salvo of “A domesticated girl, that’s all you ask of me / Darling it is no joke, this is lycanthropy” is certainly more sophisticated than “I think you wanna come over, yeah I heard it through the grapevine / Are you drunk, are you sober? Think about it, doesn’t matter” from Madonna’s current hit “Celebration”. “Mon Amour” delivers a fantastic kiss-off to a boyfriend who has gone to Paris with another woman, while “Men In This Town” ruminates on where are all the good men who can appreciate what Shakira has to offer? (I feel her on that one.)

I suppose that a certain amount of lyrical straightforwardness is to be expected on an album which is almost purely uptempo and flirts specifically with the electro-pop genre – I can’t get too mad that some of Shakira’s more insightful and wittier metaphors have been sacrificed. But the three Spanish tracks that round out the album – “Lo Hecho Está Hecho” (“Did It Again”), “Años Luz” (“Why Wait”) and “Loba” (“She Wolf”) – are lyrically superior to any of the album’s English tracks. For example, “Años Luz”‘s “Esperar es un mar que aún no sé navegar / No te quedes años luz, ya estoy decidida y quiero saber si lo estás tú” translates as “Waiting is a sea that I don’t know how to navigate / You haven’t got light years, I’ve already made my mind up and I want to know whether you have too”. The English version, “Why Wait”, says “One more night with you, I won’t think it through / Time’s money, but you knew / There’s nothing in the world you can think of that I won’t do to you”. It’s the same thought, but in Spanish it just comes across as much more elegant and sophisticated. Not to mention that “Loba” in particular seems to flow much more naturally in Spanish than in English, and the lyrics are perhaps more comprehensible. In any case, the Spanish tracks add to the album, even though they are retakes of English songs from its first half – it serves to reinforce the fact that Shakira is a bilingual artist who refuses to neglect either her Spanish or English audiences, but instead (as on the Oral Fixation era) seeks to satisfy them both. This is laudable, and I hope that Shakira comes out with a full Spanish album next year (as has been rumoured).

So it all sounds good so far. Well, the album is a consistent listen, and its brevity means that each song gets you moving but doesn’t outstay its welcome. The dense production, in the main courtesy of Pharrell and John Hill, flows throughout (except for the break provided by the relatively lightweight “Gypsy”). Because of this, there are no really weak tracks, although surprisingly, the Wyclef Jean collaboration “Spy” seems the most rote and uninspired song on the set – its straightforward 4/4 beat has nothing extra to catch the listener’s ear, and sounds lazy compared to Pharrell’s musically adventurous soundscapes in “Why Wait” and “Long Time”. “Gypsy” sounds like nothing else on the album, but its dip in tempo serves as a break which can sometimes be appreciated by the listener, but at other times seem like an interruption of the party, so depending on your mood, it could be a help or a hindrance. Other than that, all the tracks are solid, but none of them are immediate standouts save the last track, “Mon Amour”. With its decidedly rocky, guitar-led music and handclap-driven beat that intensify into a crunchy, heady chorus, it’s the kind of track that you can’t help but get wrapped up in. Shakira’s vitriolic lyrics, snarling vocals and cutesy airline announcement closing out the song are the icing on the cake, and perfectly embody a girl’s anger with her straying lover’s neglect of her (perhaps similar to 2005’s “Don’t Bother”). With repeated plays, the appeal of “Did It Again”, “Why Wait” and “Men In This Town” reveals itself, but the songs are certainly not immediate hits like “Hips Don’t Lie”, “La Tortura” or “Objection (Tango)”.

I therefore think that this is a solid Shakira album, and definitely stronger than her breakthrough Laundry Service which contained some fantastic songs but also some uninspired, pedestrian ones (here, the only track I recommend skipping is “Spy”). However, for me it falls just short of Oral Fixation Vol. 2, because She Wolf is a tiny bit too one-note in its electro-pop approach, and slightly diminishes Shakira’s lyrical mastery in the process. In terms of her entire catalogue, Dónde Están Los Ladrones? and particularly Fijación Oral Vol. 1 (the Freudian / Eve in the garden of Eden / Madonna and child symbolism were inspired and have yet to be matched in this album’s artwork and photography) are still Shakira’s crowning glories, but the Spanish-language tracks on She Wolf are lyrically more adept than their English counterparts and a worthy addition to both the album itself and to Shakira’s Spanish-music legacy as a whole. In short, Shakira has far from sold out, and has made a pop album that other artists should be humbled by, such as it melds other cultures and quirky wordplay more than most radio-oriented pop. And perhaps it is a compliment to Shakira herself that this album still falls somewhat short of her best work, and what I know she is capable of.